Back at it

Tomorrow we go back to school after 2 weeks off for Winter Break!  I'm excited to see the kiddos and my colleagues, but also a little anxious about everyone getting back into routines and learning.

Often I use Winter Break as a time to tweak my classroom routines and procedures, but this year, thankfully, I didn't really have to do that.  Things were going pretty smoothly before the break, so I'm hoping that we can pick up where we left off.  Nevertheless, I'm planning to reintroduce each part of the day, and I know I'll spend a good amount of time reviewing and reminding.

First thing in the morning, we are going to review our Class Expectations.  For the first six weeks of school, we went over these each morning as a class.  We chant the expectations "Whole Brain Teaching" style using motions I created for each one to help the kiddos recall them easily.  Tomorrow, we will review our chant and also discuss examples of how scholars follow each expectation.

I will also be reminding my kiddos about how to be a "STAR" in our classroom. I created the acronym "STAR" to teach the little guys about important character traits I want them to exhibit (More about this here). I moved these posters to our classroom door right before break to make sure the kiddos see them as soon as they enter the room.

Before we left school, I also brought out two of the anchor charts that I used at the beginning of the year to introduce workshop routines.  I'll be reviewing these with the kiddos tomorrow to make sure they remember our jobs during workshop.  I think it's important to talk about the the kiddos' jobs as well as the teachers' jobs so we all know what the expect from each other.  I also think it's helpful for the kiddos to see that our workshop routines are very similar.  I didn't plan very complicated mini-lessons for tomorrow either to allow plenty of time for reviewing expectations and getting the kiddos back into the routine.

  

Here's hoping for a smooth re-entry and a fast week!